Remember whendnesday: First modern electric car

Remember whendnesday: First modern electric car

Electric cars are all the rage today, but it's been a long road to get to this point.

Elon Musk and his company Tesla are the main forces assigned to the modern day electric car movement, however the enigmatic entrepreneur and his electric car upstart didn't spark the revolution, it was the old-school General Motors.

In California in the early 1990s state legislators mandated that all major car manufacturers had to offer a zero emission vehicle to be able to sell other cars in the state.

This forced General Motors to push its previous electric vehicle concept into production, and the GM EV1 was born.

GM produced the EV1 – the first and only vehicle to be marketed under the GM badge and not brands like Chevrolet, Buick or Cadillac – from 1996 to 1999. The EVs weren't for public sale but were rather part of a lease program as part of an engineering evaluation. Only about 1100 units were ever produced.

Featuring a two-seater layout, the EV1 had a coupe body with a very Jetsonian look to it with its flat body and bubble-like passenger compartment, and its rear wheels were covered by body panels which had shades of the Citroen DS from the 1950s-70s. This was coupled with a very 1990s slim front end with its mouth sewn shut made for, let's call it, an interesting looking vehicle.

The GM EV1 was roughly the same size as a modern day Corolla hybrid hatch in terms of length and width and has about the same kerb weight of 1400kg, which isn't too bad for a fully-electric car loaded up with older, less efficient batteries.

Initially the EV1 was equipped with lead-acid batteries before upgrading to nickel-metal hydride batteries for the last 500 or so models.

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The first run of lead-acid batteries gave the EV1 a range of about 100km between charges while the nickel-metal hydride batteries upped the range considerably to about 250km.

An electric motor produced 102kW and 149Nm, which compares quite admirably to modern day compact electric cars like the upcoming Hyundai Ioniq EV that promises 88kW and 295Nm with a range over 200km.

In 2013 General Motors decided its EV1 was a failed experiment and recalled all leased vehicles – despite a large amount of users offering to buy the vehicles off GM – crushed the majority and donated the rest to universities and museums with the electric powertrains deactivated.